Wolfe is regarded as a father of New Journalism and responsible for the use of the present tense in magazine profiles which previously always were in the past tense. His breakthrough was The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby in 1965, followed by The Pump House Gang, published the same day as the book that defined the radical 60's counterculture, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In 1979, he published The Right Stuff, an account of the first U.S. astronauts, which became a major motion picture in 1983, winning four Academy Awards of eight total nominations.Wolfe adopted his white suit as a trademark in 1962. He is credited with introducing the terms "statusphere," "the right stuff," "radical chic," "the Me Decade," and "good ol' boy" into the English lexicon.